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Saturday, 2 June 2012

Eclairs with a Chantilly cream filling

Nothing is better than a home made eclair, no matter what filling it has. I always used to buy my eclairs from the shop but started finding that they where soggy and not as fresh so decided to start making my own and I am so pleased I did and can as they really are all the better when you make them yourself.

What you do:
Choux pastry
sift your flour into a bowl.
In a sauce pan put your butter, salt and water and heat gently until the butter has melted,

once it has melted turn up your heat and bring to a boil. As soon as it starts to boil add your flour .
Remove from heat and using a wooden spoon beat furiously. Put this back onto heat and cook while stirring continually until the dough starts to come away from the sides. This should only take a few minutes.
Put this into a clean bowl and leave to cool.

Once your sough is cool to tough add the eggs while whisking. ONLY ADD THE EGG A LITTLE AT A TIME as you will find you do not need all of it.

This is what was left of my egg.

You only want to add enough egg to make a nice shiny dough that falls from the spoon when shaken.

Over your dough with a tea towel.
Preheat your oven to 200o'C and grease, then sprinkle some water onto your baking tray and cover with grease proof.
Pipe out your ecaliars. Make sure you leave plenty of space between them.

Place them onto the middle shelf and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce your oven temperature to 180o'C then quickly open and shut the oven door to let out the steam. Bake for 20 minutes then remove and pierce each end of your eclairs, this will dry them out and bake for 5 to 10 minutes.

I used a skewer and pushed it all the way through.

Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Once cool you can either slice them in half then fill and do the topping or do the topping then pipe in the cream which is what I did
Filling
Whisk your cream with the icing sugar and extract until it holds stiff peaks. Cover with grease proof and chill.

Topping
place your chocolate and cream into a a bowl over a pan of simmering water

and mix to smooth.
Once smooth leave to cool slightly and spread over the top of your eclairs. Do not leave it to cool to long or it will be difficult to spread.

I piped my cream in I used a long nozzel and poke it into the end of the eclair.